You identify some goals you associate with goodness in friendship, including comforting your friends more often. But how can you evaluate your success

Vincent’s Substack

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2024-11-25 22:30:04

You identify some goals you associate with goodness in friendship, including comforting your friends more often. But how can you evaluate your success toward this goal? You need something tangible to measure. You notice qualities like comfort, warmth, and support are typically associated with hugging. So, you think, if I give more hugs, I become a better friend, I improve my friends’ lives, and we’re all happier for it. More hugs = more good.

There are some obvious flaws in this logic. To begin with, there are innumerable ways to quantify comfort, warmth, and support. “More hugs = more good” assumes that everyone experiences hugging as a sign of friendship; it fails to account for the actual experience of the person you’re hugging. It also assumes there’s no limit to how many hugs make you a better friend.

Your intentions may be sincere, but the metric you’ve chosen doesn’t require sincere intentions. What if someone who was only interested in appearing to be a better friend replicated your model? They could force hugs onto those who don’t want them or pay off others to give hugs on their behalf. The “more hugs = more good” logic crumbles when applied to new contexts and used by disingenuous actors.